June 22, 2008

Quick Tips: Shuffling presets, flattening Bridge

A couple people have written recently to request features in Photoshop and Bridge, not knowing that what they’re seeking is already there:

A digital painter named Gracie Rafferty asked for the ability to reorder brushes. To do so, choose Edit->Preset Manager, then rock out. The same goes for gradients, patterns, swatches, etc. You can delete individual items by Opt/Alt-clicking them, which also works in the Brushes palette.

Eric James Wood would like to move from iView to Bridge and asked for a way to see the contents of multiple folders at once. That’s possible in Bridge CS3, but the UI is quite subtle. Open up the Filter panel in Bridge, then click the little "no folders" icon at the top of it. That’ll instruct Bridge to show you the contents of the current folder & all the folders nested within it. From there you can select, rate, rename, hand off to Photoshop, etc.–everything you’d do with files that live in the same folder.